Principal/ Senior

At Upvest, we're on a mission to make investing as easy as spending money. We are building the first European Investment API that empowers businesses to offer seamless investment. experiences to their users.

Upvest is a well-funded, fast-growing FinTech with a diverse team of over 250 people from 70+ nationalities working across our hubs in Berlin, Tallinn, and London. Our latest €100m fundraising round (Series C) was led by Hedosophia and Sapphire Venture, with continued support from existing investors including Bessemer Venture Partners, BlackRock, Earlybird, HV Capital, Motive Ventures, and Notion Capital.

We currently employ 250+ people across Europe with our headquarters based in Berlin, Germany, and hubs in Tallinn, Estonia, and London, UK.

How we Upvest in you*:

• Work with experts: Solving complex problems and fixing the European securities financial infrastructure that empowers more people to be able to invest by using cutting-edge technologies.
• Flexible work environment: Work from any of our hubs in Berlin, London or Tallinn hybrid or remotely across Europe, depending on the role.
• Professional development: Access an annual budget of €1,500 for personal and professional training to master your craft.
• Wellbeing: Recharge with 30 days of annual leave and maintain a healthy lifestyle with sports benefits. Access confidential professional coaching and enjoy the flexibility to work remotely abroad for up to 183 days a year.
• Compensation and equity: We believe that all Upvengers contribute to our success and deserve a competitive, above-market salary and a participation in our employee equity program.
• Team celebrations: Participate in company-wide events, such as UpFest, dinners, offsites and our Holiday party, to connect with colleagues and celebrate our achievements.

Your Impact

• As Principal Launch Manager, you'll lead Upvest's most complex, high-stakes launches with established banks in Germany and across Europe. You'll own end-to-end delivery for full launch programs - spanning scoping, implementation, and (where possible) migration - while serving as the executive-facing driver of the project. Additionally, you will support / drive asset migrations from incumbent custodians to Upvest, ensuring continuity of service, data integrity, and zero-defect go-lives.
• You are the "spider in the web": synthesizing deep product knowledge with operational excellence, running steering committees with Upvest and client executives, and aligning legal, compliance, and technology streams. You'll set the bar for how Upvest launches complex banking clients, help shape our playbooks, and mentor Launch Managers across the portfolio.

What You'll Do

• Own bank-grade programs end-to-end - Upvest's most complex and exciting projects
• Support or own (depending on experience) custody asset migrations (e.g. equities, ETFs, Mutual Funds etc.) from the client's previous custodian to Upvest
• Ensure all projects are meticulously planned, executed, and tested
• Create first-class, repeatable enterprise client launch and migration experiences: Lead and standardize securities integration and migration projects, enabling clients to build investment products on our API
• Drive day-to-day execution with Engineering, Product, Operations, and Compliance - removing blockers, negotiate trade-offs, and keep scope, timeline and risk in balance
• Set new standards in client collaboration and communication
• Run steering sessions with senior stakeholders at established banks. Surface options with clear implications, secure decisions, and maintain a crisp narrative of progress and risk
• Build trusted client relationships and foster cross-functional collaboration with a partnership mindset. Your pragmatic leadership style ensures successful integrations, motivates teams, and aligns client needs with our business goals

What You Bring

• Proven track record leading complex, multi-entity programs for tier-1 banks or large financial institutions—ideally covering custody, brokerage, post-trade, or securities operations
• Ideally experience in management consulting
• Executive communication, decision-log discipline, and calm leadership under pressure
• Expert in end-to-end project management: Proven ability to design, plan, and execute large-scale projects
• Superb project and communication skills, with a hands-on attitude
• A client-first mindset and a pragmatic approach to solving problems
• A willingness to dive into the deep end, be challenged and learn at a rapid pace
• Risk Management focus - Ability to identify risks associated with migrations and implement effective mitigation strategies
• Capable of defining and aligning technical and business requirements for seamless migration processes
• Experience in managing the custody transfer of financial instruments, like equities, ETFs and mutual funds
• Passionate about improving tools and processes
• You are proactive in coming up with an informed hypothesis, planning with foresight, and addressing questions or issues early
• You are fluent in English and German (both written and verbal)

Your Plus Would Be

• Strong domain fluency across post-trade and custody (settlement, corporate actions, reconciliations, tax/cost basis, reporting) and familiarity with standards (e.g., SWIFT MT/MX/ISO
• Deep migrations experience: in-specie/on-book transfers, large-scale data & asset moves, reconciliation at scale, and structured cutovers with dry-runs and rollback.
• Regulatory and risk acumen (e.g., MiFID II, CSDR, AML/KYC, outsourcing guidelines) and the ability to embed controls and evidence into the delivery plan.
• Skilled in handling migrations across a range of system architectures, from legacy platforms to modern APIs, ensuring a flexible and efficient approach to integration.
• Oversight in managing post-migration reconciliation to guarantee consistency across systems.

Our Values

• Make it easy for others. Team over Egos.
• Own the outcome. Progress over Perfection.
• Rise to the challenge. Growth over Comfort.
• Tell the story. Clarity over Ambiguity.

Our Commitment to Belonging
At Upvest we're dedicated to building an inclusive environment where every Upvenger feels a true sense of belonging and is empowered to do their best work. We are a proud equal opportunity employer. We welcome applications from all backgrounds, regardless of race, color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, age, or disability. Your unique path is what we value.

• These benefits apply if you will be hired in Germany, Estonia or the UK. If you live elsewhere within Europe, some of the benefits might be slightly different.